


Moments

by sapphire2309



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-15 09:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2224629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire2309/pseuds/sapphire2309
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six canon moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kate

**Author's Note:**

> For Challenge #4 at womenverse (lj).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Kate Moreau, Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke  
> Set in S01E14 - Out Of The Box. Spoilers. Canon character death.

Kate puts the phone down and turns to the tiny window. Hopefully, Burke will leave. Hopefully, she and Neal will be able to move on in peace.  
  
This is all for them, the plane, then new identities, the fresh start, everything. It’s all so that they can get that shot at life they always deserved but never got.  
  
They may not be headed to the Cote d’Azure, it may not be everything they’d dreamed of, but it’s real. Maybe the single most real thing that’s ever been in their reach.  
  
Good. Neal’s finally turned away from Burke, turned towards her.  
  
If he turns back to Peter, she’s not entirely sure that he’ll board the plane.  
  
She may not have seen Peter and Neal in person, but even from this distance, she can see that there’s something about Peter’s life that has Neal captivated. Something he can’t forge or steal.  
  
It scares her.  
  
She wills him to keep walking towards her.  
  
He turns back.  
  
She closes her eyes. She can’t watch this.

-:-

The plane explodes.


	2. Alex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Neal Caffrey, Alex Hunter  
> Set in S02E09 - Point Blank. Spoilers.

The music box was Alex’s quarry, her white whale, her treasure, her final score. She may have shared it with Neal, but she’d been hunting it all her life. He didn’t get to waltz in and act like it was his.  
  
But he did.  
  
She accepted that she’d made a mistake by telling Neal. She made her peace with that mistake by planning fifty seven different ways of conning Neal out of the treasure once he had it.  
  
Predictably, his first question about the music box was “Did you crack it?” accompanied by an undercurrent of desire that made her want to scream “It’s  _mine_.”  
  
Instead, she looked him straight in the eye and said, nonchalantly, "I'm lurking on a rooftop, spying into people's windows, do you _think_  I cracked it?"


	3. Elizabeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters (Pairings): Peter Burke, Elizabeth Burke (Peter/Elizabeth)  
> Set in S04E14 - Shoot The Moon. Promo spoilers.

They were supposed to be on a nice, quiet vacation. Instead, they were victims of a carjacking, potentially a kidnapping. A woman whose driving she didn’t know she could trust was at the wheel, a man was pointing a gun at her husband and they weren’t headed to a hotel or a resort.  
  
Elizabeth had  _really_  been looking forward to that quiet vacation.  
  
Oddly, she wasn’t tense. Maybe it was her husband’s hand on her shoulder, maybe it was the bizarre normality of laying back and watching buildings flash by, maybe it was that she’d been kidnapped before, threatened far more seriously.  
  
She leaned back and resigned herself to whatever this was.


	4. Sara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters (Pairings): Neal Caffrey, Sara Ellis (Neal/Sara)  
> Set in S04E16 - In The Wind. Spoilers.

The view from the 103rd floor of the Empire State was breathtaking.  
  
Sara didn’t try to focus on it. She couldn’t. She just leaned against the wall behind her and gazed as far into the distance as she could.  
  
She couldn’t see Neal, but she could feel him standing next to her, close enough that she could feel his arm move when he sipped from the flask.  
  
She used her thumb to twist the ring he’d just slipped onto her ring finger.  
  
She didn’t want to believe him or his words. She  _wouldn’t_  have believed him, if his voice hadn’t been rough, if his eyes hadn’t been glistening with tears.  
  
She believed him. She believed the words, the emotion behind them. But it wasn’t real. It was just a con they’d run to reach this height.  
  
In a few minutes, the flask would be empty, James would be here with the evidence from Ellen’s box and she’d give Neal the ring back and leave.  
  
She could want to stay, that was understandable. But she couldn’t stay. Not because of a promise that Neal meant but couldn’t fulfill.  
  
He'd said he meant the speech. But that could mean anything from "Marry me" to "I love you enough to let you go". She couldn't stay on the grounds of an ambiguous promise.  
  
It would hurt, losing whatever she had with Neal right now, even if it was for her job. But she had to give herself that chance. Even when her heart wanted to stay in New York, she had to give her brain a chance. Any damage done this way could still be undone.  
  
If she stayed, and later discovered that she wanted to be in London…  
  
There was no two ways about it.  
  
Even if she stayed, Neal didn’t come with guarantees. They were  _amis amants_ , friends with benefits. Nothing more.  
  
Going was the right thing to do.  
  
“Sara?”  
  
Neal was at her elbow, flask in hand, watching her with furrowed brows.  
  
“It’s nothing.” She smiled, accepted the flask, and took a sip.  
  
If it weren’t for the Dutch courage, her face might already have given her away.


	5. Diana

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Diana Berrigan, Clinton Jones.  
> Set in S05E12 - Taking Stock.

The first thing Diana noticed when she walked into the office was stationery on her desk. Or rather, a lack thereof. The bare essentials were still there, but someone had nicked her stapler. And she liked that stapler.

It had to be Caffrey. No one else was stupid enough to try.

She could deal with that later.

She sat down, reached into her bag, and smiled at the picture of Theo as she placed it on her desk. It felt a little out of place in the bullpen. It might have been more suitable in her living room. But it felt right. This was her now, FBI agent and mother. She could juggle both. They’d fit together.

She smiled as Jones handed her her gun.

It was good to be back.


	6. Rachel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Neal Caffrey, Rachel Turner.  
> Set in S05E13 - Diamond Exchange. Spoilers.

She should have been fighting harder.  
  
After all, she had a gun, she had Neal at gunpoint, she had the bond between Peter and Neal to use as she chose.  
  
She could do this. If she played her cards right, she could walk out of this completely unscathed, diamond in hand, even without the chopper.  
  
The look in his eyes stopped her short.  
  
That look said  _I’ve been there_ ,  _I know how it feels_ ,  _all you can do now is run, please don’t run_. With nothing but his eyes, Neal asked her to let him live, asked her to stop running, even as he carefully moved the gun away from his temple.  
  
He was right in front of her. She could use him, put him in pain, make it impossible for Agent Peter Burke to refuse a trade.  
  
Even after all that, it wasn’t his eyes that convinced her to stop.  
  
It was the weariness she’d tried so hard to hide away, only a hint of which she could see in his eyes. Being on the run wasn’t easy. There were a hundred chances to give up, and you had to be strong enough to resist every one of them. And that strength was exhausting.  
  
She could take it, she could resist the urge. But for what? She had nothing left to run  _to_. She’d foolishly given this con everything she had, and now she had nothing left.  
  
She walked to the edge of the cliff on legs that were locked up, strained, refusing to move, refusing to run. She let the gun fall from her grasp. There was no going back now.  
  
She walked back and leaned against the rock. Surprisingly, Neal stood next to her. He wasn’t relishing the victory. Absently, she noted that she liked that.  
  
“It’s beautiful here,” he said.  
  
It was. But she hadn’t noticed. She was beyond noticing. She was shutting down already, thinking less, feeling more.  
  
She let all her thoughts fall away and gave herself permission to just  _be_.


End file.
